


innate bounded field

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night
Genre: Gen, some gore-y imagery, some servant class swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 12:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6518779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maiya has one more mission, Arjuna has a single wish. An AU of meetings that never happened this way, but maybe they could have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to write this for like a week. The indulgence train never stops.

“ – Yet, thou serves with thine eyes clouded in chaos. Thou, bound in the cage of madness. I am he who commands those chains – ”

* * *

She expects the Servant she summons to be ragged and broken. She remembers Berserker from the Fourth War, after all, black and howling like a beast, shrouded in darkness. Instead he looks almost normal. He's wearing all white, and has a composed, solemn countenance. The collar of his shirt is high and fastened, he wears gloves. He looks almost pristine and perfect.

Then she sees it.

Strands of red, just barely visible, loop around his neck and wrists. She can see them all around his body, like fishing line coated in blood. An macabre twist on the red string of fate, she thinks, but doesn't dare say it out loud.

"Are you the one who dares call me their Servant?" He asks. There's an odd echo to his voice — as if another speaks with him. When he turns his face, a little, she can see an after-image of him — another, perfect copy that lingers in the shadow of all his movements. The other him wears the same clothes but they're stained red.

"I am the one who calls myself your Master. Hisau Maiya." She replies. She has no fear and no expectations. She has always been a shell, but there is still one more mission to carry out.

"I don't accept you." His answer comes quickly. "Forgive me for putting it so bluntly, but this partnership of ours is uneven. You wish to direct me as you might a weapon, but it's impossible. To summon me like this, there is only one direction I can go."

She understands. An atypical Berserker — that suits her just fine, she is an atypical magus.

". . . I have my own mission to fulfill as well. I only ask that when our goals overlap, you let me borrow your power."

His shadow self grins. A crooked twisted smile that seems out of place on his otherwise beautiful face. The self he means to show her, however, simply bows his head in agreement.

"Understood. That's agreeable enough. Servant Berserker, Arjuna, at your service."

* * *

“Thou seven heavens, clad in a trinity of words, come past they restraining rings, and be thou the hands that protect the balance – !”

* * *

Two months ago, she could have died. Well, ceased to exist. It's silly to say 'died' as if she had any kind of real control over what 'life' and 'death' were. But the end result was the same, she had been drenched in blood with her skin sloughing off her hands as she had banged on the door to be let back into the castle — and it was that desperation, or her blood, or her false existence that called her Servant to her side.

"Lancer," her hands have long healed, or rather, been pieced together by magecraft. Over half of her body is made up of magical circuits, and what isn't was probably never 'real' to begin with. She may have been born, but she is still a constructed being as she's reminded often. "Mm, no, Karna I should say. It's starting."

It's dark in the hallways of the Einzbern Castle, but her Servant gathers light like a small sun. He brings her warmth and comfort, even as she knows that the beginning of the Grail War is also the end of everything.

"Aa, it is." He agrees.

She thinks he could be more fun. He could be more companionable, more cheerful, more the kind of person she often dreamed about when she was much younger. She knows Heroic Spirits aren't meant to be that way, but she had hoped for someone who would make her feel less lonely.

"So, we'll definitely get them all, right? I'll tear them up." She knows what he'll say next, so she says it along with him. "'Only be bloodthirsty in moderation, it isn't a good trait to have.' I know!"

"Aa, you already knew what I was going to say." But he shares with her a small, private smile. It's so thin that if she blinks, she'll miss it. "Ilya." He adds, because she demanded it of him earlier. She demanded it of him when he saved her from the wolves and provided her with warmth in the snowy banks outside the castle she had called home (prison) for so long.

_You better call me Ilya!_

"I don't mind it if you're unnecessary, Lancer. Let's go! We need to greet everyone properly."

She doesn't say it, but they both feel it. Something heavy and dark sits on the horizon.

* * *

"Exterminate them." It isn't an order. Maiya doesn't order her Servant, she suggests in a logical manner and he (usually) agrees.

"That's a cold order," Arjuna replies. His words linger in the air near her ear even though he's already begun his descent.

"No mercy." She shoulders her rifle and looks through the scope, searching for the Master. It's a distasteful way to fight but it's the only way she knows how. There isn't any honor for weapons, anyway. The Master she hunts hasn't revealed themselves yet, but the Servant is Caster and has called up so many familiars. Skeletons, ghosts, the kind of beast that can be easily controlled.

In short, Berserker can eliminate them easily.

He almost looks the part of the Archer class he could be summoned under. The great silver bow of his is strung with lightning and almost looks as untarnished as a true hero's. But there are cracks. Black cracks that spit fire and leave soot on his gloves. The arrows too that come from his quivers are hardly the elegant shafts they may have once been but instead are black and red and twisted. It's still beautiful when they land. Each arrow blooms when it strikes, bursting into the same pattern of red — a halo of red, like the arc of blood thrown off of a blade.

It must mean something, Maiya knows, but she doesn't ask. His business isn't her own. They both have goals and there is no meaning in 'getting to know' each other.

The Master she's searching for isn't on the battlefield, but he comes up behind her. It's only her quick reflexes that saves her life. His fists bend the metal of her gun and the pressure cracks the glass in the scope. She hears it break as she rolls away. She doesn't let go of her weapon because one of the first rules of combat is to never throw away something that could be useful.

She stays crouched, gun as a ready-baton. She doesn't recognize him, but she doesn't keep files like Kiritsugu used to. She doesn't have any reason to. She doesn't want to win the war. Maiya has only one thing left to do in her life.

So she can't die here.

He hits hard but not as hard as Kotomine Kirei. It's clear to her that they both grew up in war, they both know it will only end when one of them dies. His knuckles clip her cheek, grave her shoulder and bruise her body. Hitting him is like pounding on a steel wall.

Then, for the first time, she hears Berserker's laugh. Short, brilliant and interrupted with a woman's scream.

At the same time she grabs him — he must be Caster's Master — and rolls him over her hip, slamming him face first into the hard ground. The impact and angle break his neck. It's over all so quickly. Unlike a Servant's body, when the Master is killed the corpse lingers. (The Magus Association will take care of it, erase any trace of his existence. It's almost the same as a Servant sinking back into the Throne of Heroes, returned to nothing but a distant memory.)

"She called out for him," Berserker comments. "Perhaps they meant something to each other."

They could have been in love, Maiya thinks, but her response is, "There are five Masters left."

"Have you thought on what you'll do at the end of the war?" He asks, fades to spirit form. It's easier to be around him, when she doesn't see his other face. She thinks, as well, that he prefers to not see his shadow self.

"There is nothing beyond my goal."

"Somehow, it seems we're well matched, Master of mine."

* * *

Emiya Shirou had to die. Ilya decides this in a heartbeat because her heart is breaking. He looks nothing like her father — who she mostly remembers as a black shadow and a pair of calloused hands that only lifted her up a few times in her life.

"Get them." She orders Lancer.

He follows her order exactly, even though the look he gives her as he moves forward to engage Saber gets under her skin. It's as if he's saying that he knows her desires better than her. She hates it. He's wrong. When she looks at the boy that is Emiya Shirou — who looks nothing like her father and nothing like a magus and looks nothing like anyone she should care about — her blood boils.

This is the reason her father never came home, she thinks.

Saber is strong, as expected, but her Master is weak. Ilya, who has infinite capabilities and Lancer who is an immensely strong hero, should be able to dispatch them easily. Lancer should have skewered her there. Or there. Or there. Instead his lance destroys the ground, cuts through the bottom of her armor and knocks her blade aside.

"Lancer!" Ilya calls out, "Stop playing around and get them!" She uses a seal, but as soon as the words are out of her mouth she understands the problem. It's a mistake she made months ago. The smallest admission that he must have remembered, somehow.

Ilya's wish, her most secret selfish wish.

Even with him holding back, however, Saber and her Master won't last long. It's almost a pity. Ilya thinks that she should take this Emiya Shirou, dismantle him to his basic parts and see what was so great about him to have lured Kiritsugu away. But as she hesitates, indulges in her own cruelties, a sword (of all things) flies through the air and explodes as it impacts with the street.

Archer.

"It doesn't matter who comes! We'll overwhelm them all." Ilya announces. "Lancer."

"Aa." With another sweep of his weapon he sends Saber flying and turns to meet the new enemy.

Ilya bristles too and lets her magecraft twine and fly. It takes on the form of birds and spirals — the latter is new, because she found the gold of Karna's armor beautiful enough to try and reproduce. (It had been disappointing to find her threads always silver.)

They — she, really — miscalculate the intervention. Instead of joining in the fight, Archer is merely providing a smokescreen. Saber and Emiya Shirou escape. Ilya could have given chase, she could have ordered Lancer after them. He should be able to catch them but instead she stands in the cold darkness with her birds and silver spirals hanging in the air around her.

She doesn't understand why it feels like she's been left behind for a second time. Standing alone on the battlefield again, watching allies escape her ire.

"Ilya," Karna says her name, and she can tell he's going to say something too honest and too rude so she cuts him off.

"We'll get them next time." She promises, vehemently, "I'll take everything away from him so he knows what it feels like."

"That won't soothe your temper tantrum." Karna responds.

She throws her fists against his sides and stomach, the softest parts of him but in the end he's still a Servant and he's still correct. Her tantrum is brief, because she can never afford to actually play the part of a child. Not since her father left, her mother died and she became the next vessel.

"Next time," she promises, again.

He says nothing in reply.

* * *

Maiya is close to her goal — she's certain, this battle will be the one. (It has to be the one because Berserker burns through her mana and her life far faster than she could have imagined, her bones ache with every breath. But she has to complete her mission.)

She sees the other Master, first. A small girl dressed in purple with pale hair and red eyes. She feels immediate relief, almost enough to smile. Instead she braces herself because she needs to win this fight.

She is not prepared for Berserker's reaction.

The shadow that she's so used to clinging to him and showing her small pieces of his terrible smile overtakes his image. The white of his clothes stain all red and his laughter is brittle and sharp. She understands now. All semblance of his control evaporates.

Her gut twists, and it feels as though she's been shot and all of her blood is pouring out and into him. It feels like she's dying as her Servant loses his mind. Maiya's vision blurs — she can only watch.

「 」  
treacherous eclipse, the undying wish  


The Noble Phantasm of Servant Berserker, Arjuna, is one of his own making. In fact, it is not part of the Mahabharata, nor will it be found in any of the stories of the hero Arjuna. In many ways it is an anomaly and not a Noble Phantasm at all. It is a corrupt wish born from a corrupt soul that only exists because of a wish that could never be fulfilled, that rotted and created a contamination that became more powerful than even Arjuna's own will power.

Needless to say, it only appears when he is summoned under the container of 'Berserker'.

* * *

Arjuna has been waiting for tens of thousands of lifetimes. He has been waiting for so long that waiting consumed him and became him. He is defined by this wait. He is defined by this moment of all of those lifetimes of waiting that snap and break and culminate.

To snap and break and —

Nothing seems to happen. Karna can tell something in the air has shifted, the manic look that so briefly tore across Arjuna's face has become placid. With his Noble Phantasm released, his weapon should have changed, or an attack unleashed. Instead Arjuna just draws an arrow. Nothing seems to have changed, but Karna readies himself — he can’t afford to take Arjuna lightly.

“Karna,” Arjuna says, there’s roughness in his voice that can’t be anything besides longing, “I’ve seen your face in my every waking hour, burned into the underside of my eyelids. I can taste your blood every time I swallow.”

“I’ve also waited for this day,” Karna’s reply is softer, but no less steely. He easily hefts his massive lance. “It’s time to settle things, once and for all.”

They are not quite evenly matched. The bow is not ideal for close quarters combat, and Karna’s lance has a wide reach. Karna is a superb Servant and his Master is top tier as well. But Arjuna is a Berserker class Servant, his already outstanding class parameters (shining jewel, blessed hero), have been pushed even further.

It only takes one opening, a small sliver of chance. Karna’s lance slices evenly through Arjuna’s side, but the swing leaves his arm a little too far to the right. Arjuna twists Gandiva — this bow was never meant for this — around and hooks one of the deceptively delicate looking spirals at the recurve into the soft flesh at the base of Karna’s throat. It’s easy to rip the bow tip up through his neck, until it gets caught on Karna’s jaw bone. There’s blood everywhere. Pouring out of Karna’s neck, sliding down the bow length, drenching Arjuna’s clothes (again) and making the cloth heavy.

The weight of it all grounds him, briefly. The noise that boils up within him, the madness and obsession calms. Until his whole being shudders and twists. No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t enough. Still deep within him is the thrum of need. (He needs to find Karna, to remove all trace of him from the world’s memory. This wasn’t enough.)

「 」  
again.  


The rotten wish triggers his Noble Phantasm again. A unique kind of Reality Marble, it isn’t Arjuna’s own internal world that overwrites the world, but the wish of a possibility. Again. Again. Let me meet him again. Let me kill him again. A wish that overcomes even fate.

Karna raises a hand to his neck, feels where the skin had recently been torn but is now whole again.

“Ah, so it’s like this.” He states.

“Karna,” Arjuna says, “I’ve seen your face in my every waking hour, burned into the underside of my eyelids. I can taste your blood every time I swallow.”

“Then come, let’s settle this.”

* * *

Maiya is close. Her mission is close to being completed but her body aches. It is as if every bone in her body is brittle and broken and tears at her muscles. Every breath is agony. Her Servant is killing her. Every use of his Noble Phantasm grays her vision and stops her breathing.

In front of her, a little girl stands. She looks so different from before. Even though Ilyasviel von Einzbern is only slightly taller than she once was, everything about her is different. She doesn’t stand like a child, or her mother — she stands more like her father. Kiritsugu always walked like a dead man and he would be heartbroken to know his daughter also carried his posture forward.

She can’t give up.

Maiya pulls herself up, sways on her feet and takes a step forward. She feels Berserker’s power surge and pull at her again. She doesn’t stumble.

“Ilya,” Maiya calls out.

It shocks Ilyasviel to hear her nickname from someone she can’t quite remember. But she reacts as though she is under attack. Her Magecraft and threaded birds spin and dive at Maiya. They tear at her clothes, into her flesh.

She won’t give up.

* * *

「 」  
again.  


It’s not right. It’s not right. Arjuna tears at Karna’s chest, his hands slick with blood slide across his bones. He bends ribs up, breaks them, sinks down to his wrists, then his elbows, in the viscera.

Karna’s fingertips lightly touch his elbow.

「 」  
again.  


* * *

Maiya drops to her knees in front of Ilyasviel. This, she thinks, will be her last effort. It’s more of a fall than anything, but she drags Ilya into her arms. It’s a hug, even with the blood that spreads down her shirt and across her back and the crackle of threads and magic in her ears.

“Ilya. This is a message from your father,” Maiya keeps her voice as even and kind as she can. She tries to muster up any single memory of Kiritsugu’s warmth — but she mostly remembers his pain — “I love you. I’m proud of you. I’m so sorry.”

* * *

_I’ve overindulged you, it’s time to grow all the way up, now._

* * *

Mission complete.


	2. Chapter 2

There isn’t anything left, in the end. Swept away with the Reality Marble’s shattering, along with the tenuous connection between Arjuna and his Master. He’s left standing alone in the battlefield. The red that had so prominent been wrapped around him is fading. The Mad Enhancement, as well, evaporates.

Ah.

For the first time in his life — and in his consequent summonings — the world is still and soft and silent. Arjuna feels calm, even as tears trail down his face freely.

Ah. This is it.

* * *

This isn’t her father, but Maiya wears the same blacks that Kiritsugu did. When Ilya grabs a fistful of the fabric and buries her face in Maiya’s shoulder she can almost imagine she is ten years younger and this is her father. The same awkward angle of shoulders better used to carrying rifles than children, the lingering scent of fresh blood and gunpowder, it’s all so familiar.

She cries, allows herself this moment.

There is still one thing left, she knows. When her tears stop flowing and she gathers herself she will seek out Emiya Shirou. With Maiya’s last words — with Kiritsugu’s last words — held tightly, she’ll finish things.

She’s the older sister after all.


End file.
